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UWF doctoral students say program changes will cost them thousands more in tuition

Joseph Baucum, jbaucum@pnj.com
Published 11:00 a.m. CT Dec. 30, 2017

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John Woods, a doctoral student at the University of West Florida, details his struggles caused by institutional changes in the College of Education and Professional Studies.
Joseph Baucum/jbaucum@pnj.com

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Doctoral student John Woods reads Dec. 7, 2017, at the University of West Florida's College of Education and Professional Studies.(Photo: Gregg Pachkowski/gregg@pnj.com)Buy Photo

After failing to see their dissertations accepted over a string of semesters, a trio of doctoral students at the University of West Florida contend their program's disorganization and draconian expectations have unfairly blocked them and others from graduating.

The prolonged enrollment has cost each student several thousand extra dollars in tuition.

But officials overseeing the program refuted the claims, arguing that the college's procedures now better serve students and that a legitimate doctoral degree should carry rigorous requirements.

The changes apply to the submission process for advancing and completing the dissertation, a document featuring five chapters that is subject to layers of mandatory reviews from multiple entities.

"All of these changes, they don't change any standard," said Crawley, in response to if the alterations installed new demands on students. "All they do is create more structure around the students."

But distressed students who spoke with the News Journal argued that for those already working on their dissertations, the revisions are a new mandate and the university did not equip them with the skills to meet the updated expectations to graduate.

"I was supposed to be out of school by now," said Venieta McLeod, a doctoral student who also teaches at Brentwood Elementary School. "I was supposed to have already started my second job."

Instead, the 62-year-old said she'll have to take out another student loan and spend thousands more to secure the degree.

In July, the college unveiled a revised 12-step guide for students to follow for their dissertations. It stretches 58 pages, with the first dozen pages covering the 12 steps and the remaining 46 pages providing a multitude of forms students and officials must complete.

The guide identifies several entities that can move the dissertation forward in the process or stall its progression. They include the student's dissertation committee; Godwyll; the Ed.D. Program Office, which handles administrative aspects of the process; and the university's Doctoral Support and Quality Assurance Center, responsible for performing comprehensive reviews on all dissertations and relaying feedback to Godwyll for his evaluation.

After satisfying those overseers, the university's Graduate School must also conduct a final review of the dissertation.

The 2016 version spanned about only half the amount of pages of the current version. It needed only seven pages to cover the 12 steps and featured only 24 pages of appendices, with several of the forms carrying fewer obligations for formatting and documentation.

Despite nearly doubling in size, Godwyll echoed Crawley's statements and said the updated guide serves to better codify expectations for students and the document did not add new requirements.

"Broadly speaking, what we have done is to make clear the things that were already there," Godwyll said. "The standards have always been there. The university has always required that a dissertation be rigorous and be in a publishable format, so (these are) support structures we put in place to make sure that the student gets through that stage."

Crawley and Godwyll could not speak to the complaints of specific students. The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prevents such an action, similarly to how HIPAA prohibits officials from disclosing a patient's private medical data.

But a different picture emerged from several students who spoke openly with the News Journal about the program.

John Woods, a 58-year-old doctoral student who also works as an education coordinator at the Children's Home Society of Florida and adjunct at Pensacola State College, described the issue as semantics on the part of the dean and doctoral program director. He hoped to graduate in May. But at the earliest, he now anticipates finishing by the end of next spring, which he estimated, at the minimum, would cost him an additional $3,300.

"They're going to point you to catalogs and basically say, you still have to take this number of credits, so that didn't change," Woods said. "You're still required to do an amount of coursework in your specialization, so that didn't change. And you're still required to do a dissertation, so that didn't change. All of that is true, but it's the process to get the dissertation through that went through significant change."

To illustrate his point, Woods pointed to an issue that has emerged with each of the students — institutional confusion over which entity serves as the gatekeeper of the dissertation. The students receive some instructions from their dissertation committee, comprised of at least three faculty members, but also must obey the DSQAC, the center that reviews dissertations and staffs graduate students to complete the work.

Woods explained that prior to the arrival of Crawley and Godwyll, the dissertation committee acted as the primary reviewers to guide the student through the dissertation process. He said a few others, such as a person to ensure formatting was correct, also served in the proceedings. Throughout, students knew the main source for receiving direction, he said.

But now, he said the DSQAC serves as a significant authority and dispenses instructions that, at times, conflicts with the advice students receive from their committees.

"To be honest with you, the ones on my committee tell me to just do whatever I'm being told to do," Woods said. "If yesterday the DSQAC told you to print your dissertation out on blue paper but today says to print it out on pink, you better have it printed on pink."

Compounding the issue is the timeliness in which students receive feedback to correct their dissertations and hit deadlines to graduate. Nadia Mohandessi, a 34-year-old student who works for the government in disaster-response preparedness, outlined a slow and dizzying back-and-forth series of events between the DSQAC, her committee and her committee chair.

Mohandessi submitted her dissertation to the DSQAC in December for a review. She received it back in February with a long list of revisions attached. In June, she turned in her revised dissertation to her committee. A month later, she heard back from her committee chair, who advised more edits.

But then in late August, Mohandessi's chair summoned her to a meeting and delivered a set of rubrics newly implemented by the university that she needed to abide by. The rubrics nullified all of the work Mohandessi had accomplished to that point, she said.

"Every single point in every single cell of each chapter rubric had to be addressed within my dissertation," said Mohandessi, who now expects to not graduate until the end of the spring at the earliest, costing her an additional $2,000 at a minimum. "Sections, headers and sub-headers had to be rearranged, deleted or created and rewritten as necessary. I was told to disregard the February feedback from the DSQAC and the revision requests they made at the time."

McLeod, the student who also teaches at Brentwood Elementary, described a similar experience of receiving conflicting instructions and then getting hit with new rubrics she said she was never taught to be able to complete.

She enrolled at the university, expecting a doctorate to boost her income, which she needs to provide for other family members. But as of now, she estimated the program at this moment has cost her about $8,000 more than she planned to spend.

"I should have been making a different income by now," she said. "Since I can't work that second job or move up into a higher paying job, I'm going to have to get another student loan."

Woods estimated at least 12 students feel similarly aggrieved in the program, but Mohandessi speculated the total could extend much higher.

However, not every student spoke ill of the program. Eric Kollar, director of advising at the College of Education and Professional Studies, graduated with his doctorate at the end of spring 2016. He said his master's degree, also completed at the university, similarly required a thesis project. He said he submitted the project several times and made numerous revisions to it along the way.

The master's capstone, he said, prepared him for what to expect as a doctoral student.

"Rather than being heartbroken, you just kind of trust the process and go through with it," he said.

But Kollar, who graduated with his doctoral degree before the program's most recent changes went into effect, admitted his experiences likely contrast from those of the students still trying to complete their dissertations.

Crawley conceded the turnaround time at the DSQAC has been longer than should be expected and could improve. But he said how quickly a student receives feedback also depends on the condition in which the student turns in the dissertation. Essentially, the fewer mistakes to correct, the faster the DSQAC can complete its assessment.

He also emphasized the rubrics add consistency to how all entities overseeing the dissertation process evaluate students' work.

"The point is that if you have multiple readers, we are all using the same expectations," Crawley said. "We're using the same tools. My goal for the program is as a student puts their materials through multiple levels of review, it's that every level of review is at least speaking the same language."

Godwyll added the recent changes, such as the updated 12-step guide and rubrics, can be viewed as assets for completing the dissertation or as detriments to the process. He said it depends on the student's perspective.

"There is the saying that you can take the horse to the riverside, but you can't force the horse to drink," Godwyll said. "So we can provide all the tools. It is up to the student to appropriate these and to do what he or she can do."

But Woods said a different reason exists for the alterations to the doctoral program. He said previously, the college signed off on numerous dissertations that have now been deemed unfit in quality for the level of prestige the university seeks. And with the new administration in place after Godwyll's arrival, officials installed a stringent set of procedures to boost the program's reputation.

Based on this premise, he wondered if the university educated him to complete a dissertation according to expectations now deemed mediocre and if that means his education has also been subpar.

"If the change in the program required this drastic of change, then what about all of the education we got all of those years for the coursework, was that substandard?" Woods asked. "If this required that drastic of a change, then what kind of quality of education was that?"

The News Journal requested records from the university to confirm how many doctorates the college has awarded since 2010. Based on the information, the college has witnessed a decline since the arrival of Crawley and Godwyll.

In 2010, the college approved 22 doctorates, followed by 21 in 2011, 36 in 2012 and 19 in 2013. In 2014, the year Crawley assumed the dean's office, the number dropped to 16, followed by 14 in 2015. Only nine doctorates were awarded last year.

The college awarded no degrees this past spring.

The decline can partially be explained by the number of students in the dissertation phase also dwindling. The program went from its highest number of students in 2013 — when it averaged more than 88 students per semester — to last year averaging only 53 students a semester who were working on their dissertations.

Still, based on the percentage of students who completed their doctorates, 2016 featured the smallest amount of graduates since 2010, with only 17 percent of students in the dissertation phase graduating. At its peak in 2012, the college authorized about 40.6 percent of students' dissertations.

Moving forward, Crawley expects about 10 graduates in the spring and possibly more in the near future.

"Our program has grown in the last few years, so I would expect to see those numbers start ticking up," he said.

But the students who feel aggrieved remain discouraged. Woods compared the program changes to learning how to drive a car with automatic transmission, on a specific type of road, with a defined path, only for the instructor to then force him to drive stick, on a different surface, with new coordinates — and to execute it perfectly.

"I'm not opposed to change," Woods said. "But what I am opposed to is that if you trained me in a certain way and you made the changes because you felt it was necessary, then why am I being punished for that? There should be something in the system to account for that."